After three postponements, Ethereum’s Istanbul Hard Fork is set to be released on Dec. 4, 2019. The release date was announced by Peter Szilágyi, the Ethereum foundation team leader, Cointelegraph reports.

Szilágyi confirmed the release through a tweet where he stated that the Istanbul hard fork is set to take off at block 9069000. He also gave Geth mainnet node operators with a fresh link which will initialize the hard fork.

There are two clients who operate nodes within the Ethereum network with one of them known as Geth while the other one is Parity and will update once the Istanbul is activated, for now, is at the review stage.

Following the announcement of the release date, it is only prudent for Ethereum users to move to the new platform so as to evade any unplanned surprises, reports U.Today.

The Istanbul hard fork is a testament that Ethereum 2.0 which is referred to as Berlin, is closer to realization. The intended upgrade is scheduled to be completed before the end of next year.

One of the key features in the new Ethereum 2.0 is the introduction of the proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm. The new feature will help in addressing the issue of ASIC miners within the network.

The new release is also set to authorize new fork orders which will ensure avoidance of partially started individual networks that coexist as well as ending the unwanted memory copying occurring in the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The new release will also help in fixing bugs during the transaction process.

The Istanbul hard fork is facing hurdles from certain community participants led by Aragon, which develops DAOs on the Ethereum network. Jorge Izquierdo, Aragon CTO explained that the Istanbul hard fork will lead to breaking of about 680 smart contracts that have been developed in Aragon platform.

The Istanbul hard fork started its journey in May this year after the release of the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) by Szilágyi. It is still not clear whether the initialization of the hard fork will take place following a series of postponements.